I get most of my news off the Internet. I can read through only what interests or affects me and get it all done in about 15 minutes, as opposed to having to watch an hour's worth of news (local and national/world) complete with bad hair, bad jokes, human interest stories that aren't terribly interesting, and commercials. I hate commercials.

Sometimes, I read the news on the "Oddly Enough" link on Yahoo news. Sometimes, it's a reminder that there are in fact people out there that do incredibly stupid things and that (regardless of what dumb thing I just did) I'm not one of them. But today, I read this Like Something out of a Cartoon.

In short, someone has developed an alarm clock that actually works to get you out of bed. Apparently, after the first time you hit snooze, it rolls off. When it goes off again, you have to go hunting for it in order to turn it off.

Um...is no. I have absolutely no desire to chase my alarm clock. I get up at, oh, 5:30ish Monday through Friday. It takes a me a good 30 minutes to become functional. In that 30 minutes, I've had a couple of cups of coffee, I've walked the dog, and read part of the paper. No hunting, no searching, and, frankly, no talking. My mornings are nice. Why in the world would I need to ruin that with an honest to goodness traveling alarm clock?

Maybe some people need this. I can think of a couple of people in my life who definitely could. You won't see me with one though.

A little old lady in my complex dotes on my dog. That's fine, I dote on my dog. Everytime we go by to get the mail or just on a walk, she meets us on the way back with a snack for him. Usually, it's just a little lunchmeat or a piece of cheese. Yesterday, it was a little piece of liver. She spoils him.This morning, taking our morning walk (way too early for my tastes, but you can't mistake a potty dance on your neck at 6:15.), she invited us in for a cup of coffee. No problem, she's lonely, we can spare time for a cup of coffee in our pajamas. Wonderful cup of coffee, too. Not your typical Folger's blend. A little cream (real cream!) and sugar, fabulous.So, we're sitting there talking, she's feeding bits of cheese to the Wonder Dog, and she proceeds to analyze me. (A note, dear readers, don't do this. Unsolicited analyzations piss me off.) She tells me that she can see in my eyes that I'm feeling an emptiness inside. I was tempted to spout some sarcastic remark (yes, my stomach), but decided against it. Instead, I asked her what she meant. She said it was glaringly apparent I'm feeling a need to be a mother to someone. Since I'm not having a baby anytime soon, I've gotten a dog to curb the urgings to be motherly.How do you tell someone that this is a load of shit? Sure, someday I want to be a mother, but my "urgings" aren't running rampant. Hell, I've got some goals to meet first (get married one day, have a house and a yard, those kinds of things) and I'm not in a rush to do those things.No, I got a dog because I wanted a dog. I promised myself when I started my masters degree that I'd get a dog when I was finished. My family has always had dogs, and I've never felt right in a house that didn't have one. So, when I had a chance to get a free puppy, I did. Yes, I dote on him and spoil him much the way some might a child. He was very sick the first month I had him, and I agonized over him. Everytime we had to rush to the vet, I was frantic and couldn't focus when sent to work. He is my "child" in the sense that he is dependent on me for everything. But he's not a replacement for a baby in my life--unrequited desires or no.My parents call him the "grandpuppy." They bought the car harness (seatbelt for dogs) that I'd been looking for because they were "very worried about him riding in the car." I got in trouble the other day because I left him at home when I went to visit. Silly me, I thought they wanted to see me. How could I have been so dense? Sounds to me like they've got unanswered urgings for grandchildren. I hate when people tell me things like that--you've gotten x as a way to deal with your desires for y. Sure, it happens, people get pets when what they really want is a baby. I have to wonder though, when was the last time someone got a baby, when what the really wanted was a dog?

I got my first furry, all to myself pet just before Christmas. He is my absolute pride and joy. My house is littered with toys--both "on-purpose" toys and those that he has designated toys. I have 3 kinds of treats, puppy vitamins, a product called Good Dog (fabulous stuff), leashes, harnesses, you name it, I've got it or have thought about getting it.

A.C. surprises me daily. We've got a little lamb toy we call Lam-buh (R christened it). I'll ask him where Lam-buh is and he'll run around the house making this "buh, buh" noise looking for it. Makes me wonder if he's calling it, you know?

He's such a character. When I fall asleep on the couch, he'll wake me up before I've been out too long so I can go crawl in bed. He already understands that I don't actually get up until the 4th time the alarm goes off in the morning. He doesn't even move anymore until that one.

Yesterday, he sang along to the radio with me. He'd been quiet and still in the seat next to me, then I started singing the song on the radio. He perked up and started singing, too. The song I ended, I quit singing and he went back to dozing.

R disappointed me the other night. He did something that I've never heard him do before, and never expected him to do, despite his latent pretentiousness.

I drove into town for dinner with him. Found out that morning that it wouldn't be just him, it would be him and his girl. (That's a whole other gripe, even including the fact that I like her.) After some light-hearted conversation, we started on our way to the restaurant. We were leaving from her parents' house, where they are house-sitting, and I recognized the part of town that we were in. R had worked in that area while we were dating a couple of years ago. I asked about it, and we started talking about the people he'd worked with. There was the greasy guy, who was likely a cokehead, and the couple that owned the company. The couple were really nice people who were kind of being screwed by the greasy guy.

R starts describing these people. This is where he disappointed me. "Really nice people. Working class, of course, but just good people."

Did you catch that? He described people by their class. As in social class, not culturing.

I was apalled. I've never heard him do that, ever. Sure, in conversation about specific things (politics, social reform, whatever), we've discussed classes. It's appropriate then. I thought maybe I'd misheard him, but as I ran the conversation through my head over the weekend (and it happened 5 days ago), I realized that he'd actually done it. I couldn't beleive it.

It bothers me only partly that he said it at all. The bigger bother to me is that I identify with the working class. My family is working class, always has been. Yes, we've a family ranch, a large one, but we were never the "landed gentry" in this state. Yes, there have been college grads before this generation, but frankly, it's only in my generation that some of us are going to finally get past/rise above working class and join the (or have joined) the professional class.

R knows this, he's met my family. I have to wonder, now that I know he does in fact classify and think of people according to their classes, what he thinks of me and my family.

Maybe I'm giving too much credence to this, but I've learned, the painful way, that he rarely "accidently" says anything that he doesn't mean. He mis-speaks (often), but, in my mind, a "slip" like this is not something easily misconstrued.